| Highlights of DAWN | May 1981 |
The Promised New Beginning
“Behold, I make all things new.” —Revelation 21:5
“THE belief in an ever better tomorrow, the conviction that obstacles exist to be overcome, and that the United States has a strong and beneficial role to play in the world—these constitute the American secular religion.” Such are the opening words in Time magazine’s recent special project entitled, “American Renewal.”—2/23/81
Then follows a brief summary of the major problems afflicting this great nation—seemingly ungovernable inflation; unsatisfactory output as measured by our gross national product; bureaucratic interference in virtually every facet of the life of the nation; high unemployment; anxiety about national energy needs; declining military power and world influence of the United States relative to the growing might of the Soviet Union; loss of confidence and respect by our friends in the western nations; Russian expansionism in the Middle East; and the threat of a new and greater war in that sensitive part of the world.
But the writers of this ominous report do not yield to despair. Far from it! America, they say, is basically strong in those things needful to meet the problems. “It has immense resources—physical, intellectual, spiritual—which are not being fully or rightly used. An American renewal is entirely possible,” say the authors.
This national urgency to grapple with present troubling problems and dispose of them; this hunger to be lifted out of disturbing conditions and get a new start, is not unique to our day. Following the financial debacle of the late 1920’s and the resulting economic distress of the early 1930’s, Franklin D. Roosevelt rode into the office of the presidency on the basis of a “New Deal” that promised to give relief to the “forgotten man” and restore prosperity to the nation. It was under Mr. Roosevelt’s leadership that the nation embarked on a broad-based social revolution that included passage of the Wages and Hours Law, unemployment insurance, and old age insurance.
Capitalizing on the success of Roosevelt’s New Deal theme, Harry S. Truman was carried into office on the promise of a “Fair Deal.” Mr. Truman did not succeed in his efforts to promote government sponsored health insurance, but he did achieve limited public housing projects for the poor and elderly, and an increase in the minimum wage. Later, these beginnings of a New Deal and a Fair Deal for the people were enlarged upon by Lyndon B. Johnson when he came into the presidency in 1963. Mr. Johnson called his own broadened social program “The Great Society,” and successfully promoted his “War on Poverty” plan, instituted Medicare, and obtained increased federal aid for education.
But in the course of time all these social programs, however one may regard their merit or need, have come to require increasingly greater sums of money to keep them in operation. In the space of sixteen years their annual cost has grown more than tenfold from a relatively modest 30 billions of dollars to a staggering 320 billions, and now constitute more than half of the entire annual budget of the United States Government. Along with the cost of fighting several wars, the gross national debt of the United States has increased from about 16 billions of dollars in 1930 to the almost incomprehensible figure of 960 billions in 1981, over which period of years the national budget enjoyed a surplus only four times.
Of course, governmental budget deficits, just like personal budgets, must be financed by borrowing. It is this vast borrowing by the United States Government and the consequent expansion of the money supply that is the fundamental cause of the inflation that is now rampant in this nation, and which is generally regarded as being the most serious of all the problems facing the country. There are many who believe that the cost of financing and administering our wide-ranging social programs has been a major factor in bringing the economy of the country to its present worrisome condition.
Indeed, in spite of the good intent, the magnitude, and the cost of all these New Deal programs, the problems they were designed to solve are still with us. Almost every large city in the United States still has its own expanding equivalent of New York City’s South Bronx ghetto, where tens of thousands exist in deplorable circumstances. With one of the highest standards of living in the entire world, America has not eliminated hunger from among its people. When the housewife makes her weekly trip to market she finds the price of everything she buys, from apples to zucchini, is rising, as the take-home pay constantly buys less.
Costly new school buildings, student football fields, gymnasiums, swimming pools and school buses, all built with rising taxes, and all built with the highest of motives, exist in company with near-illiteracy in our grade and high school graduates. The crime these vast expenditures was supposed to alleviate is increasing, while the number of those on unemployment insurance and welfare rolls grows steadily larger.
But whether one’s particular complaint is the high cost of gasoline, the shrinking purchasing power of the pay check, the trauma of being laid off, exasperation with governmental red tape and high taxes, or whatever, there has evidently been frustration aplenty in these difficult days to go around for all—enough, in fact, to propel a new president into the Oval Room of the White House. So now we find Ronald W. Reagan, like so many of his presidential predecessors, hopefully proposing his own new brand of cure for the nation’s many ills, the essence of which plan was set forth in his recent speech to a joint session of Congress, and which he labeled, not surprisingly, “America’s New Beginning.”
Mr. Reagan’s proposed plan of attack on the country’s problems is bold, and considered in some quarters to be unorthodox. He proposes to reduce taxes, eliminate needless governmental interference in business, reduce certain aspects of the numerous social welfare programs, and strive toward a balanced budget a few years down the road. Thus he hopes to bring inflation under control, reduce unemployment, and stimulate the economy. He also plans materially to strengthen the armed forces of the nation (at great cost, it might be noted) in the hope that this will dissuade the Soviet Union from further attempts to impose its brand of communism on the rest of the world.
In a somewhat similar crisis President Roosevelt, endeavoring to rally the spirits of the nation, uttered his still famous words, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Now we have Mr. Reagan’s somewhat less eloquent, but nonetheless hopeful, statement that “there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed.”
But the problems facing Mr. Reagan are formidable, and the consequences of failure could be awesome. “Will it [Mr. Reagan’s program] succeed?” is the question often heard. We would not presume to know. Nor do we know what effect, if any, the recent attempt to assassinate the president will have on the outcome of his program. We do know, however, that neither the president’s bold plan, nor indeed, will any other plan of imperfect man, delay for one hour the inevitable final phase of the Time of Trouble that is already causing “distress of nations.” (Luke 21:25) We confidently state, on the assurance of God’s unchanging Word, that when the Time of Trouble has completed its work of destroying this present evil world (Gal. 1:4) with its unjust ways, the Lord God of heaven himself, in his own due time, will inaugurate his own “New Beginning”—one that he has promised in his Word by all his holy prophets since the world began (Acts 3:19-21), and which will truly solve all of the world’s problems, great and small, bringing joy, justice, and everlasting life to all the obedient of mankind.
In the Scriptures, God’s “New Beginning” is called “a new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.” (II Pet. 3:13) The very name of this new, heaven-directed program for the redemption and blessing of humankind plainly tells us that all the man-made plans of the past for the betterment of humankind have failed because they were not rooted in justice and love. The new heavens and new earth, or new world social order, is Christ’s millennial kingdom, which will be established when the present world, or social order, is done away with at the conclusion of the Time of Trouble.—II Pet. 3:7,10,13
This thousand-year kingdom will be under the beneficent, loving rule of our glorified Lord Jesus, who will be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords; and associated with him in that righteous reign will be his faithful footstep followers of this Gospel Age, who shall “live and reign with him [Jesus] a thousand years.”—Rev. 19:16; 20:4,6
Probably the first work of Jesus and his church in that new kingdom will be the gradual calling forth from the grave the sleeping world of mankind, that they may “come to a knowledge of the truth.” (I Tim. 2:3-6) Since the world began only a few have known of God’s abounding love for mankind, and only a few have fully known the incomparable joy of doing good, and of serving the Lord their God and their fellow men. All the rest have been more or less deceived, and more or less motivated by selfishness; but in Christ’s kingdom, Satan will be bound, “that he should deceive the nations no more.”—Rev. 12:9; 20:3
Then will start another essential phase of God’s own plan for a New Beginning—the restitution of mankind to the joyous perfection once possessed by father Adam in the Garden of Eden. Before mankind can hope to come back into full harmony with the Creator of the universe and receive his ultimate blessing, they will have to forsake their iniquitous ways, and turn their hearts toward righteousness. And in this great project God plans to direct and assist the resurrected race of man. Speaking of that glorious future time for the people of Israel, and also for all the world of mankind, God said through the Prophet Ezekiel, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, … and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”—Ezek. 36:26-28
The Prophet Jeremiah also foretold this loving arrangement by God for man’s recovery from his fallen condition. This new spirit and new heart will be proffered to mankind under the wise and loving provisions of a new covenant that God will make with Israel and with the whole world. He wrote:
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”—Jer. 31:31-34
This New Covenant that God will shortly make with the world of mankind in the kingdom, is the antitype of the old Law Covenant that he made with Israel at Mt. Sinai. Both covenants required sacrifices, and both covenants were ordained to give life. The old Law Covenant brought atonement between the nation of Israel and Jehovah God year by year by means of animal sacrifices. But the standard of the old Law Covenant was perfection; and because imperfect men could not live up to the perfect requirements of the Law, they did not gain life.—Lev. 18:3-5
But the Apostle Paul tells us Jesus “is the Mediator of a better [new] covenant, which was established upon better promises,” and made effective “with better sacrifices.” (Heb. 8:6; 9:23) The old Law Covenant was typical of the New Covenant, and the animal sacrifices under the old Law Covenant were also typical of the better sacrifices on behalf of the better New Covenant. Thus we see that this New Covenant that God will make with the world of mankind, made effective with better sacrifices, and under which God will give man a new mind and a new heart, with a new opportunity to gain everlasting life, is an integral and essential part of Jehovah God’s wonderful New Beginning for all people.
In that glorious new world, under the loving guidance of the new and greater Mediator of that New Covenant, there will be no more homeless people, or those living in ghettos. There will be no more hunger, no more need for food stamps, or welfare payments, no more disheartening unemployment—no, not even the remembrance, or mention, of such things! “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind [mentioned, nor come upon the heart—Rotherham]. … And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”—Isa. 65:17,21-24
There will be no more need for Medicare and Medicaid payments, for in that day “the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick; the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity.” (Isa. 33:24) And there will be no more wars, or strife of any kind! In that lovely, peaceful, restored paradise on earth even “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain [kingdom], saith the Lord.”—Isa. 65:25; Mic. 4:1-4
To make sure that every one of these promised blessings shall indeed be made available to the resurrected world, Jehovah God will already have installed his own new world government, the New Jerusalem, consisting of Jesus and the overcoming church. These, with close cooperation by the risen Ancient Worthies who shall constitute the earthly phase of that beneficent government, shall administer the righteous laws of that glorious kingdom with equity and justice. All who come to know and to love the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and mind, and their neighbors as themselves, will gain happy, everlasting life on this lovely, renewed earth.—Acts 3:19-21; Matt. 22:36-39; 25:31-46; Rev. 21:1-5
What a matchless New Beginning this will be for the poor, suffering and dying world of man! A new world wherein dwelleth righteousness; a new start for the resurrected peoples of earth toward everlasting, happy life; a new mind, a new heart and a new spirit for each, to enable each one to live up to the righteous laws of the kingdom and thus gain life; a New Covenant, with a new and better Mediator, to guide and encourage and strengthen and bless; and an entirely new and altogether just world government, under the control of the New Jerusalem, composed of our Lord Jesus and his faithful followers of the Gospel Age—what more, one is constrained to ask, could a loving, merciful Heavenly Father bestow upon his so highly favored human creation!
And what an unqualified fulfillment this will be of that all-embracing promise made by Jehovah God himself, which he gave to his son Jesus, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass, and which was duly recorded by John in the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation: “And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.”—Rev. 1:1; 21:5
And in that same wonderful time, even the overcoming church will be given something new! Each precious member of the little flock, in addition to gaining immortality and living and reigning with Christ, will have bestowed upon him by his loving Lord and Savior a very special and unique gift that will be known to him, and to him alone—Jesus will give to each a new name, that will be “known to none but him that receives it.”—Rev. 2:17, NEB
As we endeavor to take into our finite minds the lengths and breadths and heights and depths of the Heavenly Father’s love, we find it is all too much. We can only humbly say with the psalmist, “O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”—Ps. 8:1